Company of Heroes 10th Anniversary Roundup

By

Andy Bergin

Posted On 12.12.2016

Our groundbreaking Company of Heroes franchise turned 10 on September 12th, marking a huge milestone in the history of our studio, and a defining moment for the entire Real Time Strategy genre! Scooping universal acclaim and multiple Game of the Year awards, COH is still rated as the best ever RTS game by both Metacritic and Gamerankings.com.

Such an event called for special measures, so we rolled out a host of features and events to celebrate our golden baby in style. Here are some highlights!

Everyone knows that it’s not a celebration without a good cake, so we commissioned what might be the most formidable cake of all time in the form of a Tiger tank! This delicious work of art was created by our friends at the Letter Press Bakery, who went to incredible lengths on the details that brought this gooey war machine to life.

Fittingly, the bulk of the tank was a German-style chocolate cake. The dirt was made from crumbled cake bits, the grout for the brick wall was royal icing, the intricacies on the tank itself were painstakingly carved from modelling chocolate, and the base was built with the most robust of materials, Rice Crispies. All in all, the finished product took over 80 hours to make and weighed over 60lbs! Check out the full video of its creation here.

Most COH fans will be familiar with the iconic map Angoville, a COH1 original which was remade for COH2. B&B Modelling made us this stunning 3’x3’ diorama of the fan-favorite battleground. They’ve got some COH fans and WW2 buffs amongst their ranks, so the level of detail on the piece is pretty spectacular.

We’ve only just had the completed model delivered to our studio, so we’re going to be putting out some new content covering it, including a more detailed making-of video. Keep your eyes peeled!

Even though it was COH’s birthday, it was the Relicans that got awesome gifts. This t-shirt has a brilliant design and you’ll see lots of us rocking them at work. Better yet, everybody received the Company of Heroes 2 Platinum Edition which went down an absolute storm.

But it wasn’t all about us. As a way of saying thank you to our dedicated fanbase, we put on a huge September Steam sale in which all of the Company of Heroes franchise was available for 75% percent off, and in-game items were 66% off.

In October, we teamed up with Humble Bundle to raise money for a host of charities. For those who spent $30 dollars or more, not only did they get the entire COH catalog, they nabbed some super rare swag like limited edition T-shirts and digital art books. Most importantly, the Humble Bundle was a major success, generating $149,000 for our charities.

We also made sure you got in on the gift-getting action. Our COH Brand Manager, Alex Delamaire and Kevin Freitas, one of our 3D Artists, came up with the idea of a Company of Heroes 3D printable. With help from Senior Artist Allan Dilks, and Programmer/3D print enthusiast Mihai Radu, the team designed this brilliant model which we put on Sketchfab where it’s been downloaded almost 3000 times!

COH enthusiasts were also able to get their hands on this eye-popping 10th Anniversary wallpaper, designed in-house by Artist and Graphic Designer Michael Lee.

Best of all, we got to see you guys find creative ways to celebrate with us! This pic from twitter user @Pantageneto is one of our favorites.

Executive Producer Greg Wilson, and Game Director Quinn Duffy are well known to the COH fan-base. That made it all the better when the two heavyweights squared off in a hotly anticipated grudge match. Watch the replay of that titanic duel here.

But it wasn’t all parties, gifts, and all-out war. It was a great time to explore the legacy of COH and how it became such an iconic franchise. Kyle Fehr, our COH Community Manager, got the ball rolling, sitting down for an in-depth Q&A with Quinn, who was involved with Company of Heroes right from the very start, unearthing a treasure trove of insight about the special game we all know today.

Meanwhile, Rock Paper Shotgun praised the game's innovations saying: “Relic gutted real-time strategy, tearing out rock, paper, scissors combat and base construction, and filled it with new organs like physics, destructible buildings, and ultra-detailed maps.” And Gamespot released some previously unseen concept art and other images of the game. There are some incredibly cool shots that are well worth checking out.

PC Gamer printed an in-depth interview with long time Relicans Quinn, Ian Thompson and Alun Bjorksten. They discussed a lot of the core mechanics, design decisions, and challenges that had to be overcome during the development process.

In their article, PC Gamer said: “It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since Company of Heroes landed.” That’s exactly how we feel, and we want to thank our amazing fans along with Relicans, both past and present, for making this amazing franchise what it is today.